


Localized Symptom (Remix of "Fit Arrangement in Disorder")

by asuralucier



Category: True Detective
Genre: Canon Typical Violence (mentioned), Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hooker!Rust, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Infidelity, Remix Revival 2019, Surprisingly Gen, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-08-13 02:44:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20166853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Three meals fifteen-year-old Rust Cohle eats with Maggie Hart.





	Localized Symptom (Remix of "Fit Arrangement in Disorder")

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fit Arrangement In Disorder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561409) by [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/pseuds/skazka). 

Rust knows that Marty doesn’t think he’s a good-looking kid. (Translation: even with his long straggly hair and his big blue eyes, he looks more like a starving thing than anything that passes for a girl even in rural Louisiana.) The guy makes no secret of it, as if he’s protecting something else about himself. That’s fine. Rust doesn’t judge. There are other considerations. Marty has _kids_, two girls. 

He doesn’t know what they’re doing. They go to this bar, and Marty buys Rust his preferred beer; the barman asks no questions like always. 

It turns out that Detective Martin Hart (“it’s Marty, how many times do I gotta tell you?”) who keeps slinging around that word, _Detective_, as if it’s gonna protect him from something else too, has a soft spot for Rust. And it’s not a sex thing. It’s not even a boy thing (again, he keeps insisting); it’s only equivalent exchange. Marty gets the information he’s after. And Rust gets

“You ever think you’re too smart for this?” 

Cleanliness is the nearest thing Rust has to a God, a religion. He cleans his room; he cleans himself; he sanitizes everything the outside world touches to feel all right or at least something close to it. Today, his hands are raw and red, and he hides them pillowed underneath his head. 

“Fucking is a biological imperative. Everyone’s got to. I gotta do something, right?” That something might get him done like Dora Lange, but that's not something they talk about either. It's obvious, a waste of time.

It’s funny, but it doesn’t ever get Marty when Rust talks about anything else. That one time Rust links antemortem stabs on a body as reflective of Schopenhauerian will, how it’s looking towards death and thinking about life; how the body is an offering to philosophy in its actuality of being. Marty just rolls his eyes and tells him to shut the fuck up. 

Somehow, Rust can tell the man is listening anyway. 

It’s different when Rust ventures anywhere close to the question of sex, the very specific practicalities of dick meets pussy or mouth or ass, _that’s_ when Marty squirms. Squirms like he never does in front of the pictures of dead women, of dead kids, of maggots crawling out of orifices that used to leak out human life. 

The truth is yes, yes Rust does think that he is too smart for this. But once he admits that, he won’t know where to go or where to look for that something else. So he doesn’t. 

Marty says, changing the subject, “What are you doing tomorrow night?” 

“You mean, besides,” Rust says. 

For once, Marty doesn’t take the bait. “Wanna come over for dinner?”

* * *

It’s one of Marty’s girls who opens the door and for a moment there, Rust thinks that she’s going to run screaming for the hills. But maybe Marty drinks at home, so it’s no big deal. The girl informs Rust that her name is Audrey and what’s your name? The hard liquor that might as well be swimming in Rust’s system seems to be dribbling out of his pores too, alongside his sweat.

He’s wearing a nice shirt, one that Lisa’s swiped from some john. It’s Isabel that tells him that he should bring flowers. But she doesn’t exactly tell him what _kind_, so Rust is stuck holding an armful of flowers that the florist’s got leftover and half of them look dead. Nothing gets by on this Earth gets by without looking a bit dead. 

“Rust,” he says. 

“Rust,” Audrey repeats, baby blue eyes peering at him, as if she’s trying to peer _through_ him, down to his bones to see how small he really is. “That’s a funny name. Pipes rust, don’t they?” 

“Audrey!” says the voice of someone who must be Marty’s wife. “What do we say to guests, sweetie, hm?” Then the woman appears behind Audrey and puts her hands almost protectively around her daughter’s shoulders. As if she thinks Rust is dangerous in some way. Marty must be telling some tales around the house, how Rust is fucked in the head and all. 

Audrey glances up at her mother, and the way Maggie smiles at her kid hurts Rust everywhere. More immediately, it makes him sober up. He has plenty of memories about his old man, but none about his ma. He’s got to make that sort of stuff up for himself, and Rust has always got a bad imagination where the good stuff is concerned. 

Then the girl looks at Rust again. “Hi Rust, would you like to come in? You have to wipe your shoes on the welcome mat.” 

Rust thinks that he would rather faint. Keel over right on their welcome mat. He says, “ - Sorry, where’s your bathroom?”

* * *

Marty’s bathroom even smells nice.

There are brightly colored towels and toothbrushes and toothpaste. The whole damn tableau reminds Rust that he probably should have brushed his teeth before he’d come here, to get rid of the smell of cigarettes that they must smell on him. Not that Marty minds that sort of thing; Marty likes to sneak cigarettes from him sometimes and he makes Rust promise not to tell anybody like Rust really has anyone to tell. 

A knock on the door. Maggie says, “Can I get you some water, Rust?” 

Rust stares down at the toilet bowl. It doesn’t look like he’s done anything too terrible to it; it’s mostly spit, heavy breathing amounting to nothing. 

He flushes the toilet just in case, and grabs the edge of the seat to haul himself up. Then Rust remembers to wash his hands, using a liberal squeeze of Marty’s - no, probably Maggie’s, Mrs. Hart’s - nice handsoap. 

Then Rust opens the door and Maggie is there again, holding out a glass of water in the cleanest glass that Rust has ever seen. 

“Thanks,” Rust says.

* * *

Maggie Hart is a great cook, probably.

Rust doesn’t know the first thing about home-style cooking. The dinner plates are a matching set, and the silverware is so polished Rust can actually see his own tired expression as he tries to cut through thick, juicy sirloin steak. Maggie had asked him how he’d liked it and Rust doesn’t know. 

“Whatever you think is best,” he shrugs. “Don’t care, really.” 

“Kid, have you never had _steak_,” Marty ribs him with that friendly nice guy fucker grin and Rust really feels like rearranging his face. That’s something they don’t really tell you about hooking until you’re knee-deep, and then waist-deep and then the only thing that you can do to keep your nose out of the shit is learn to throw a mean left hook. 

But maybe that’s bad manners too, to assault the man in his own house. Not to mention that Martin Hart is a goddamn _Detective_.

* * *

Later, Maggie thanks him for coming. Rust doesn’t know what to do with that. He suddenly is hit with the urge to use the bathroom again.

When Rust re-emerges, Marty does him a solid and more or less frog marches him out of the house. As the door shuts behind them, Rust can hear snatches of conversation, of Maggie telling the girls to do their homework.

* * *

“Marty isn’t here,” Maggie says. “He’s at work.” She is leaning against the door, looking tired but not used up. In Rust’s head, he tells himself that there is a difference. Maggie just looks like she hasn’t seen Marty for at least a couple of days. That’s all, it might not even be a big deal.

“No,” Rust shakes his head. “He’s not at work.” He doesn’t do it to be cruel. It’s simply the truth. 

Maggie doesn’t look terribly surprised. She presses the back of her hand to her forehead, as if she’s checking for a temperature. 

Rust says, “Are you okay, Mrs. Hart?” 

“Maggie,” she corrects him. “Please. These days I’m not really Mrs. Hart.” After that, she steps back, gestures. “Do you want to come in?”

* * *

The girls are away at some sleepover. Marty’s at _work_. Maggie tells him that again, as if by sheer force of will she’ll make it true.

This time, Rust is less drunk. He looks around _chez_ Hart and notes the family mementos. A photo of Audrey and her sister in baby clothes. A framed picture of Maggie and Marty on their wedding day. Maggie’s dress is a billowing thing, a giant white wave attached to her body threatening to swallow her up. It’s the sort of thing that could probably give him nightmares.

Rust says, before he can help himself, “Were you -” 

“Pregnant?” Maggie finishes for him. “Yes, but the baby didn’t live. I don’t think Marty’s ever gotten over it. Not having a son.” 

Rust looks down at himself, then he looks at her. The moment stretches into something heady and odd, and then Maggie turns away from him. “Would you like something to eat, Rust? I haven’t eaten.”

* * *

This time, Maggie fixes him some shredded chicken and lettuce, asks if he minds mayo, and Rust says he doesn’t. Then the whole thing goes in between thick-sliced bread, the kind in advertisements, where it looks better just because.

(Rust finds that he does mind mayo after all, it’s sour and sickly. Reminds him too much of -) 

“Marty says you’re from Alaska? That’s quite an accent for Alaska.” 

“Alaska by the way of Texas,” Rust says with his mouth full. “Lubbock, actually.” 

“I have family in Lubbock,” Maggie tells him. “And I like that. Alaska by the way of Texas. That’s real clever.”

* * *

Rust curls his hand around himself in his dead silent clean room, and thinks that he is real goddamn _clever_. He’s always hated it when Marty says it. That’s probably why the guy does, say it.

* * *

“Here you go,” Marty sticks some papers back at him and Rust takes them in a drunken haze. “You left them at the house.”

(“What the fuck were you doing there?”) 

Rust doesn’t have anywhere to put the papers for the moment, so he puts them on the empty seat next to him. He drinks more beer. It’s lukewarm. “You look at ‘em?” 

“Sure, I did. Hell of a theory you got.” Marty chews the side of his cheek almost violently. "This whole thing keeps getting more and more fucked up."

And that’s the end of that.

* * *

“Mommy! Something’s wrong with Rust!” Audrey, shrill, and girlish and loud and too close.

Philosophy fills in the gaps, Rust thinks, idly, like a crazy man who doesn’t have his wits about him. But that’s why he thinks the way he does. Great dead minds a poor substitute for a living man’s bones, or anything that is left of him. 

“Rust? Marty’s not here ag…” Maggie trails off. He feels a grip, too strong to be a woman’s but Marty’s not here again. “Come on. Up you get.” 

Maggie leads him into the bathroom, tells him not to worry about making a making a mess. If he needs it, their First Aid kit is over there. 

“I’m going to put the girls to bed,” she says. “Will you stay in here until I do?” 

“Yeah. I can do that.” 

Maggie goes, and Rust roots around in the kit, comes up with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. No, if he drinks that he might go blind.

* * *

Maggie insists that Rust puts on something clean; she’ll put his clothes in the wash. Most of Marty’s shirts are too big and Rust feels silly. But he does feel better.

“Hungry?” Maggie asks. She looks like she wants to ask him something else too, but she’s too smart for that. 

“Not really. I’d kill for a drink.” 

She looks him up and down. Rust looks nothing like the son that they could have had. Maggie’s brunette, but both Audrey and Maisie are both blonde. Maggie probably could have squeezed out a big, blond football jock. Somebody big enough to toss Marty around like either a sack of flour or a literal football. “Normally I’d say no.” 

“But nothing about this is normal,” Rust points out. “Except for Marty being away.” 

“I’ll make you a deal, Rust. You eat something, there’s some soup left-over. And then you can have a beer.”

* * *

The soup is good. Thick, meaty broth made from leftover chicken bones with big chunks of vegetables floating in it. Rust asks for seconds. Maggie even joins him for a beer out on the porch. They sit there for a very long time, and Marty’s car never shows up. Serves him right, too.

Something else they don’t really tell you about hooking; it’s not like there’s a handbook or an entry in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_: it’s easier if you pretend you’re somebody else. Rust gets the feeling that Maggie isn’t exactly fresh at that, either. She says, later, not looking at him, “I haven’t been to Lubbock in a long time.” 

Rust turns his eyes away from her back and looks up. “It’s somewhere to be, ain’t it?”

* * *

Rust has never been back to the house since. He almost forgets about the incident, even, because his mind had been on million things that evening and he's since had to make room for a million more things.

But then Marty says to him, “How would you know what pussy tastes like,” as if he’s forgotten that Rust fucks for a living. Pennies, but it’s still something to do. 

Rust holds his gaze, conscious of the fact that he is wearing a new shirt. One that Marty’s bought him because Rust’s black eye and his swollen knuckles does something to the guy. (Again, it’s not a gay thing.) 

He thinks he can see it, the moment when Marty gets it. Marty’s not slow, but he’s really good about being _blind_. It’s why he always listens to Rust exactly half the time. When the first punch comes, Rust is not completely prepared, but pain he can deal with. He’s been dealing with pain for a long time. Longer than Marty will ever know, even though the guy won’t ever admit it. 

But he hopes he’s helped Maggie too, if even a little. Rust really does. It’s why he still doesn’t throw his mean left hook.


End file.
